Nels LONG & Brennen HULLER: Affinity intends to create a platform where the tools and freedoms inherent to the virtual environment will become accessible to users of every discipline and level of technical understanding.

This platform is accomplished by the combination of an intense attention to the user’s need for specific spatial detail in virtual reality and the creation of interactive hybrid reality workspaces.

Affinity will rely on algorithmically generated, tailor made environments for each user. These environments are specifically designed to stimulate creativity and trigger the imagination, while mitigating any adverse psychological conditions. Each user will have access to a number of different virtual spaces through integration with the Oculus Rift. Participation begins in a public lobby where users will be exposed to many varying types of projects, and the people behind them, through adventure based game-playing. In this way we hope to promote collaboration and innovation. When a user conceives of a project to be developed within Affinity he or she moves into one of its many lab spaces and will have access to a number of tools allowing them to customize the space to the needs of their project.

Simultaneously, Affinity is beginning to challenge the segregation of physical and virtual environments. In this search we hope to fine new tools to challenge not only the architectural status quo, but through our team of doctors, engineers and philosophers we intend to expand these findings across discipline. Our current work in the Robot House at SCI-Arc intends to do just this. Maintaining our attention to environmental aesthetics, we conceived of a system that allows for an infinite feedback loop that crosses from physical to virtual and back. Here, we are capable of engaging with identical virtual and physical environments simultaneously by working in a physical design lab and passing physical objects and data to our virtual clones for testing and simulation, and conversely as well (See Fig. 4).

To read more about Affinity and to see how you can get involved please visit our webpage at: [sbdl.us/affinity]